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No minimum interview marks means no veto, Punjab high court rules
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that a selection committee cannot declare a candidate unsuitable solely on the basis of an interview when the recruitment advertisement prescribes no minimum qualifying…
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has held that a selection committee cannot declare a candidate unsuitable solely on the basis of an interview when the recruitment advertisement prescribes no minimum qualifying marks for that stage. Justice Harpreet Singh Brar quashed Chaudhary Bansi Lal University's decision to award zero marks in domain knowledge and interview to a BC-B category applicant for the post of assistant, despite him scoring 35.55 out of 80 under the other notified criteria.
The court found that the university had effectively converted the interview into a disqualification stage, rendering the weightage assigned to earlier components, which carried 80 of the total 100 marks, nugatory. Relying on the Supreme Court's Manoj Manu judgment, it ruled that such a departure from the advertised criteria amounts to impermissible rewriting of the selection rules. The absence of a reasoned basis for the nil award violated Article 14, the court added.
Allowing the writ petition, the court directed the university to reconsider the petitioner for appointment in light of its findings. The advertisement had allocated 12 marks for the interview and 8 for domain knowledge out of 100, with no threshold specified for either component.
Indian Opinion Analysis
The case turns on a distinction Indian courts have long drawn between weightage and a qualifying threshold. Under the Supreme Court's 2013 ruling in Manoj Manu vs Union of India, once an advertisement lays down selection criteria, the recruiting body cannot add new disqualification conditions mid-process. Here, the Punjab & Haryana High Court applied that principle to a recurring problem in public recruitment: selection committees using the interview as a de facto elimination stage when the advertisement gave it only 12 out of 100 marks. The decision binds public universities in Punjab and Haryana directly. Chaudhary Bansi Lal University now must either appoint the petitioner or justify keeping the post vacant. Other employers using similar composite criteria without specifying minimum interview marks face analogous legal risk. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on this exact fact pattern, so the issue may reach it if appealed.
Source: livelaw.in
This brief was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
